


Fraud

by WahlBuilder



Category: Gaunt's Ghosts - Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 10:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10897707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Larkin comes to Hark with an important petition.





	Fraud

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _The Guns of Tanith_.

Larkin shifted from foot to foot and looked down at the papers clutched in his hand. They were creased in some places, their corners were fluffed, and a few stains of dirt were smeared here and there. The print was smudged in a few places, but the form was undeniable, filled with Larkin’s own squiggly handwriting—and another alongside it, every letter neat and rounded.

He glanced up at the nondescript door in front of him, and imagined a swarm of horrors barging out of it. Then he would have had an excuse to run away. But the door remained perfectly normal.

Larkin rubbed the thread bracelet on his right wrist, and its familiar texture calmed him somewhat—but then he jerked his left hand away from it and lifted his right wrist closer to his eyes, inspecting it, looking for thin places, for signs that the bracelet was going to break apart.

He was afraid of it breaking apart, afraid of losing it somewhere. But for now, it was secured on his wrist.

Larkin straightened up, swept a stray hair off his shoulder, and knocked on the door.

Something muffled came from behind it, but it didn’t sound annoyed or dismissive, so Larkin didn’t have any choice other than to go in. He didn’t want to look like a fool for knocking and then going away.

The room behind the door had barely enough space to fit in a tiny desk and two chairs, and that was all. Larkin suspected that sometime in the past the room had been a supply closet.

It was barely big enough for Commissar Hark’s bulk. He was slouched behind the desk, glaring at a dataslate in his hands like it was personally responsible for each and every one of the Ghosts’ problems.

Larkin saluted—and winced when his precious papers hit him on the face. He already wanted to run away.

‘Hello, Larkin.’ Commissar put down the dataslate and smiled, but it looked very thin. With his close-cropped hair and dark circles under his eyes, Hark looked like a skeleton.

‘Hello, sir,’ Larkin said, lowering his hands, trying to decide where to put himself.

‘Sit down, please. I’m sure you have come to me with something important.’ Commissar’s eyes were boring into Larkin.

He swallowed, pulled the chair, and sat down. It was too low for him, and he didn’t know where to hide his knees. The Commissar lowered his gaze, and Larkin followed it. It was boring at his papers.

Larkin pressed the papers to his chest. Then cleared his throat. ‘Yes, it is important, sir. Very important, in fact. Matter of life and, and death.’ He licked his lips. His right leg was bouncing on the floor.

Hark put his hands on the desk and smiled again. ‘I am listening.’

Larkin glanced down at his papers, opened his mouth. Then closed it, reached out, and pushed the papers on the desk. One sheet nearly flew off the desk, and Larkin’s heart clenched, but the Commissar caught the stray sheet, made a neat pile of the papers, lifted them to his eyes.

Larkin’s left hand shot to the right wrist again, and he followed the pattern of interwoven thick threads over and over again, recalling in his mind the day when Bragg tied the knot. The Commissar’s dataslate chimed, and Larkin nearly jumped out of his skin. The Commissar didn’t pay it any attention. 

Then after some few hundreds of years Hark put down the papers like the dataslate before that. ‘This is marriage papers.’ It didn’t sound like an accusation. 

‘Yes.’

‘Filled by you and—’

‘Yes.’

Larkin lowered his eyes under the Commissar’s gaze, looked at the papers. Even though they were upside down relative to him, Larkin could read them, could recite them word for word. Could describe every crease and smudge and smear on the creamy sheets.

‘But they weren’t approved.’ 

Larkin thought he could hear something like sympathy under the guise of neutral tone, and looked up again. ‘We didn’t… There was no time. We wanted to register them properly, but it’s always this or that, and then… And then he was murdered,’ he finished, pushing the words out past the lump in his throat. His chest was filled with ice of dread and anger and grief that he couldn’t even scream out into the void. The scream was always inside him, though. One day he would explode from it, it would be too much to hold in, it would crack him.

‘I’m sorry.’ It was quiet and it wasn’t followed by anything else, and Larkin was grateful. He didn’t need words for that. He needed justice, and by the Emperor he would get it one day. He would crack Cuu with his scream.

He locked his hands on his lap and looked at the Commissar with all his anger making him as solid as Bragg was. ‘I want you to sign it.’

Hark took a deep breath. Then let it out. Then leaned back, pressing his palms to the desk, over the papers. 

Larkin waited. He felt like Bragg was right behind him, supportive, reliable, firm. He would not back down.

‘It is forgery,’ the Commissar said at last.

Larkin managed to smile, and it felt sewn onto his face. ‘No, sir. It’s fraud.’

Something glinted in the Commissar’s eyes, something that usually was there when the Colonel-Commissar was going to do something heroic and suicidal, and Hark had to be the voice of reason. ‘You want me to backdate it and send it and claim that it was simply delayed along the way,’ the Commissar said in the same even tone.

Larkin nodded briefly, crumpling the fabric of his pants on his thighs. He hoped the desktop would hide his nervousness. ‘I don’t care about the widower’s compensation,’ he hurried to say. In case the Commissar didn’t understand. ‘We wanted… I just want…’ The room blurred around him, and he bit his trembling lower lip, trying to hold back the vibrating, sharp scream.

‘It would need Gaunt’s sign, too,’ Larkin heard the Commissar say.

He wanted to wail. He wanted to be executed on the spot.

He clutched at his right wrist, scratching his skin furiously, rubbing the bracelet with his thumb.

Then he heard rustling behind the desk, and a click of the pen. ‘Trooper Larkin, now that we finally have an opportunity to send your papers in,’ Hark said in a raised voice, ‘Colonel-Commissar and I will make sure that it’s recognised properly.’

Larkin heard a pen sliding over the papers, and dared to glance at the Commissar. Hark’s face was serious and impenetrable as he leafed through the form, and signed it a couple more times. ‘I apologise for the delay in the processing,’ the Commissar continued.

Then their eyes met, and there was something soft in Hark’s eyes.

And, soft, it made Larkin feel a bit more solid again. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he breathed out. Then he guessed it was time to go, before his luck had run out. On trembling legs, he got up, moved the chair to make some room, and headed to the door, sweaty hands pressed to his pants.

‘Hlaine.’

He nearly walked right into the door. So rarely his first name had been used that he had almost forgotten about it. Larkin turned around slowly.

The Commissar was looking at him not with the neutral expression he had kept throughout their conversation, but with naked sympathy. ‘I’m sorry.’

Every bit of tension left Larkin suddenly. Bragg’s breath ghosted on the back of his neck.

He smiled. ‘Yes. I’m sorry, too.’


End file.
